FTE Must = Frank, Tammy, & Edward

Call any contact center and get into a conversation about call center services and you will quickly find the person you are speaking to referring to their agents as “FTE” “Dedicated Staff” or my personal favorite “operators.” For years the BPO industry has worked hard at removing faces and names from our operations team, and without knowing it, or maybe on purpose, made the contact center space seem like a commodity to the outside world.

The answer is simple, YOU CANNOT!! Agents are real people, they have real bills, and funny enough are typically the primary consumers or the products and services they are supporting at the contact center. So, how does the BPO industry begin the long hard battle of removing the idea of “CommodityCall Center” and get back to the days of looking at agents as people rather than an “FTE”?

The first step is for all of us to agree that customer experience and employee experience must be #1, and that profits cannot come before people!

Yes, I know this may sound insane, lowering our profits to make peoples lives better, are you nuts?!?!?! No, I am not nuts, just understand that when people who work for you are happy, they are willing to go the extra mile for your business, which in turn will help you grow even larger than you are today. So yes, sacrifice a little profit today, for MUCH more profit tomorrow.

So this is step one, and it is a step that we are already seeing being implemented in the business world. Just look to Zappo’s, Amazon, and a long list of other very successful businesses putting people first and reaping the benefits from it.

So why not in the BPO contact center space?

Some will immediately say, “we do not have the margin needed to do that!” or “businesses will not pay the rate to make that happen!”

What I mean by this is that yes, businesses out of the gate will not be willing to pay more for a service that most of the BPO space charges much less for. But, they would be willing to pay more for a service that is at a different level than what your competitors have to offer when you can prove it. The hard part is that one word, “PROOF!” To do this right you must be willing to try it at the potential cost of your profitability on a program. But, by doing this you will then build the proof needed to show other businesses why this approach not only works, but must become the new standard in the world.

It goes back to the oldest sales teaching there is, Quality Before Price! If you can prove that your BPO sees agents as Frank, Tammy and Edward instead of “FTEs“, and that this view of employees will help make your customer more money. Then guess what, you can get the price needed to build an amazing new way of performing BPO support services!

Once these first steps are taken, you have to commit to stay the new path you have designed. This way your employees do not see it a fluke, but the way things are and can become part of your new solution.

Forging a new path all begins with taking the first step. Are you willing to see what lays beyond the well known beaten path?